I am a carpenter by trade and enjoyed living essentially free in one of the units of the building I own.

Since you are essentially only focused on half of the business you should have relationships with your buyers.

You are essentially betting your family home that you will be successful and that nothing will go wrong in the flip.

Budget price for a property: $200k maxCAP Rate: essentially my mom wants around 6-8%+ return.Ultimate Goal: to have cashflow $40k+/yr within the next 15 years.We also are not interested in the buy and flip strategy as my mom wants passive income through renting out.

I also would just consider going directly to that state's SOS website and filing the LLC paperwork there.

I don't really want to spend a lot of time with the day-to-day of managing properties, and essentially want to be a hands-off investor; this is what makes wonder if i should be looking at much bigger buildings. 

The home is conducive to splitting into a duplex, I've talked with the city already and though I've not filed any paperwork for a zoning switch they said it shouldn't be an issue.

The Quick and Dirty of Wholesaling Lease Options…Here are the basic steps:1) Find a motivated seller who wants to sell their house on a Lease Option…2) Get the property under an “Option To Lease Option” contract…3) Find a qualified tenant-buyer who has a good down payment and a good chance to get a mortgage in 6-12 months…4) Sign the Lease Option paperwork with the Tenant-Buyer…5) Assign the Lease Option docs back to the seller…6) Keep the Option Consideration / Deposit and give the Seller the first month’s rent…7) Put the Tenant-Buyer in a credit repair program with your mortgage broker…8 ) Deposit your money & move on to the deal!

When you're making an MLS offer it's most often essentially a nameless faceless type of situation. 

@Steve Babiak In a sfr it is legal to essentially overload the system, with assumptions about usage allowing it.